Oprah’s departure from daily television has left millions of people in a state of crisis: without her regular pronouncements of her “favorite things,” how are we supposed to know what to buy, read, or like? No worries, however. ProfPost has decided to step in and take on the responsibility for moving markets by letting you—the tens of devoted readers who visit this blog—in on some of our favorite things. But we won’t play favorites, or even pronounce “good things” like another influential media celebrity. Rather, we will offer our (not so) humble endorsements of those ideas, things, techniques, and people that enrich and enhance teaching and learning.
Today, ProfPost endorses …… Undergraduate Research.
On Friday morning I walked into TUC in order to visit the Undergraduate Research Poster Session that had been stationed there all week. I did so mostly out of a sense of duty: I had advised three of the students who were presenting, and wanted to stop by to see them and glance at a few of the other posters before making a quick exit. But I quickly found myself conscripted as a faculty assessor, which is how I ended up spending the morning learning about how liquid drops react to various surfaces, how difficult it is to determine pregnancy in Asian otters, and the amazing number of icky things that you can find in a rain barrel if you look closely enough and have access to a sophisticated lab. Impressive stuff. But even more impressive were the young scholars who presented this information. They were smart, articulate, and able to explain their sophisticated research in terms even a humanist could understand. As I was filling out my first assessment, I began to write of one of the students that she “clearly has a promising future ahead of her in medical research.” No, I thought. Strike that. She clearly has a promising present in medical research. And she was surrounded by over 150 colleagues who were also engaged in sophisticated research. It is moments like this that remind me of how vast and how productive our university is.
Like most faculty, I have always supported the idea of undergraduate research (I’m sure I invariably marked it “Very Important” on Survey Monkey polls), but hadn’t really given it much thought. The Poster Session was one of several moments this year that transformed me from a quiet supporter to an evangelist for undergraduate research. Another moment came earlier this spring, when I witnessed an intense debate between a Philosophy major and his advisor on a topic that I didn’t understand, but which seemed to have to do with mental states. The advisor didn’t toss softball questions at his student, but rather attacked the core of his argument, just as I had witnessed him do in an exchange earlier in the year with a visiting Taft lecturer. And the young scholar met his mentor argument for argument. In fact, I think he won on the point—as far as I could determine, anyway. Later that afternoon, I watched a group of Sociology majors respond to a fellow student’s presentation by noticing that the data from his poll seemed to indicate that many of his subjects didn’t understand the questions or had no idea what they actually thought about the issues being polled. They ended up in a discussion of problems of evidence and questions about their own methodology that was wonderful to behold—and all without “adult supervision.” And throughout the year, I have listened to students who have traveled the world to gather information for their research. Backpacking across Europe or South America is a great adventure for any college-age student; how much more fulfilling and adventurous it is when you are doing so in order to understand post-earthquake recovery in Chile or the intricacies of dialects used in Berlin!
UC is justly proud of and known for its co-op programs, which send students out of the classrooms to practice the very professions that they are studying. Undergraduate research should join co-op as the second pillar of experiential learning at UC. From what I have observed this year, we have an amazingly talented group of students who are eager to undertake productive research right now. If we add encouragement, resources, and advising, the results will be incredible. And the Major Awards—Fulbright, Marshall, Rhodes, etc.—that we so desperately seek for our students will surely follow. More important still, these young researchers will develop solutions to the problems they are tackling, making not just UC, but the world better off for their work.
Ok, end of sermon. Now go forth and promote undergraduate research!
